Changes in The French Luxury Market

The French luxury market is going through cultural changes, mainly regarding sustainability and the market’s view on women. A trend is that the view on women is changing. In France, the women always had to be perfect and flawless, but now the luxury fashion market is accepting the flaws of a woman. However, this trend is still developing and not as big as the sustainability trend. Sustainability and green-producing are growing in France and becoming more important since customers want to know where their products are made and how. Also, not many firms in the market are yet focussing on this matter. Secondary research supports the primary data on that a new trend in the French luxury goods market is new eco-friendly luxury materials, so a more sustainable way of working. New start-up companies are providing alternatives to traditional material, such as animal-free leather and lab-grown diamonds.

Since sustainable materials and products are increasing in popularity, luxury brands are forced to communicate more about the production process and supply chain towards the consumer, which requires companies to be more transparent. This sustainability trend is an advantage for Feraggio and an opportunity the company can impose on since the company is already producing on an eco-friendly method and is transparent to its consumers about its production process.

When looking at Chaffey’s 5S variables on a company’s online marketing and its website, the primary data states that in France customer-care and customer-feedback is very important. The French value in-store customer care and therefore prefer shopping in a physical store, instead of in an online web-shop. The French customers desire to have the opportunity to give feedback on the firm on its website, for example, a ‘reviews’ page. Also, secondary research supports this and states that the consumers also want more interaction with the firm and the consumers want to have the ability to give their opinion to the firm. Furthermore, when looking at digital advertising and digital sales (e-commerce), France falls behind its neighbour countries. In France, the digital sales in luxury goods were set on 8% of the total sales in luxury goods in 2016, whereas in the Netherlands the current digital sales in luxury goods were set at 29%. This data shows that the French consumer do not prefer to buy online but in a physical store since this is part of the “traditional nature of shopping”.

When comparing the collected data from the interview and the secondary research, the data states that the French prefer to shop in a physical store.